Breakdown of faults by car brand: Tesla has replaced Dacia at the bottom
tuvsud.com
tuvsud.com
Seems like Tesla fails at the core feature of a car.
> Seems like Tesla fails at the core feature of a car.
Thank god the existing manufacturers have this nailed down, like Toyota[0], Dodge [1], Ford[2], Mazda[3], or even high end manufacturers like Lamborghini[4].
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-recalls-new-ev-over-risk...
[1]: https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/dodge-ram-trucks-recalle...
[2]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/2022-ford-f-150-raptors-recall...
[3]: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/nation-world/2019/07/03/...
[4]: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/lamborghini-aventador-sv-...
Tesla = would fall off
Tesla = you talking out of your ass
Basic stuff, impossible for Volkswagen.
EDIT: I agree with the replies that say this should be handled by CarPlay/Android Auto. In which case I’d like my cars software to support that well.
EDIT2: Oh and there has to be an api where the car shares charge state and range estimates with my phone, such that my phone can plan a route around charge stops.
The interface feels smooth as a tablet, and I don't think they've done too many weird customizations. Overall quite pleased.
[1]: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault...
Unlike Spotify, car radio does not need subscription nor account.
I wouldn't want to have to setups accounts in my car. Also you don't necessarily want the persons who borrow your car to know everythings about you including every single place you have marked as favorite.
The builtin infotainment system is usually just a second thought that exist just to showcase something in the showroom and setup android auto at first use.
That one of the tricks Tesla is figuring out is how to cook the books on these figures.
I drive an ICE Subaru, and I love it. But some friends visited and didn’t tighten the gas cap once, which put the infotainment system into a fit, which put a bunch of other systems into a conniption, systems totally unrelated like ABS. (?!) The issue persisted across restarts and ultimately required servicing.
How was this recorded? User error. In part because there is a dealership between me and the manufacturer that is responsible for servicing the vehicle.
I wouldn’t have linked the two had the dealership not told me that was what caused it.
Also dealerships not having a clue is not rare either. Many garages these days only connect a computer to the diagnostics port, download whatever error codes are shown and tell the shocked driver that half of their car is kaputt with the repair likely going to be several thousands of euro.
All the while the real problem is a blown fuse for one of the control units or a wire has chaffed and broke somewhere - and the diagnostic codes come only because the ECU can't talk to some sensors because part of the vehicle's CAN bus is down.
To me, the car broke. Plainly and simply. And had Tesla had a similar fuckup, I don’t think they’d find sympathy. (Reasonably.) That’s something that comes with a longevity.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38762366
[2] https://www.subaruoutback.org/threads/loose-gas-cap-causes-e...
Yes it should be better documented. I ran into this as well on my Subaru, but once the cap is on proper it -should- turn off within ~1hr of driving (constant or short trips)
To wit; if you don't put AdBlue in a diesel it will eventually outright stop working altogether even though it's only there for emissions.
This is clearly BS, since it was either coincidence or an electrical/systems problem. The shamelessness of making that claim that is incredible.
Some might question that this could be an electrical or systems problem, but the gas cap on my Kia, a relatively flimsy piece of plastic, will disable the car if not replaced properly. How does this manifest itself? With a check engine light on the dash.
This is the most stupendously idiotic misfeature in an otherwise well designed (and reliable) car.
ex. my current car had an intermittent O2 sensor issue, which would turn the traction control in lazy mode and try to kill me in snow/ice conditions by reenabling itself at the worst possible moment when detecting slippery conditions. My previous car had traction controls completely independent from engine faults.
Now, granted, my Subaru has a wonderfully designed interior, doesn't require using a touchscreen, has consistent panel gaps, etc...
Model 3s are not luxury vehicles. By feature set, positioning or price point.
Teslas are priced as luxury cars but they aren't luxury cars. They have strong selling points, like the amazing battery compared to other EVs or their looks (I do find the Model S very nice / sleek) but the quality of the interior/materials and sound proofing simply isn't there, not by a mile.
Here's a list, for example, of some actual luxury cars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-segment
I was highly disappointed when I went in a Model S: I'm used to actual luxury cars and I simply don't know how to put it nicely: to me a Model S is a complete rip off price-wise.
I'd urge anyone thinking that Tesla is luxury to go in a Mercedes dealership and sit in a class S or go to a Porsche dealership and sit in a Panamera (or in the Taycan 100% EV). That is luxury.
FWIW the Tesla Model S and Porsche Panamera (for example) entry models begin at the same price so it's not apple and orange comparison: that's why I say Tesla is sold as luxury, at the price of luxury, but is not luxury.
Confirmed. Friends in the car maintenance business have witnessed for years a quality fall (materials etc).
"Infotainment", I hope I will not have the experience (apart maybe from removing some), but my last car was the first one with a sound system that hissed.
At a polar opposite, I'm reminded of the wonder of walking across the Brooklyn bridge and thinking, "they don't make them like this anymore".
Althought we did learn a lot about the affects of pressure on the human body which is cool.
Aka petrol/diesel
What government subsidies has Tesla received to date? Please post links to sources.
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/22/autos/tesla-loan-repayment/...
[2] https://theweek.com/articles/454749/auto-bailout-officially-...
The discussion is about subsidies not loans or bailouts (which are different things)
They move fast and break things.
You forgot the third: they (Silicon Valley) also change the world. For the better. Most of my (and my family’s) every day work and fun are coming from SV. I would not give it up for anything else. If occasionally breaking things is the price - I am more than willing to pay it.
That's up for a through debate, but not today. Let's leave it at I don't agree that part 100%.
Were it not for Tesla, America wouldn’t be on a path towards electrified transport. The tradeoffs are incredibly germane to the topic.
So, yes, it's up for debate.
Lastly this doesn't change the fact that Tesla fared the worst in the automaking competition this year w.r.t. everyone else, and they're faking till they're making it. More automakers are always good, but more pretending is always bad (cough VW, Cummins, cough).
I never disagreed. I’m saying the case at hand, EVs, provide a potent balance of the tradeoffs Silicon Valley’s methods involve.
On one hand, you get the capacity for transformational change. Change that can be for the general good. On the other hand, we have costs ranging from a culture of normalised lying to ideological nothingburgers gaining currency due to their proximity to, well, currency.
Put another way, remove Silicon Valley from the equation and yes, we have safer cars. But we also have little reason to be optimistic about ever hitting carbon zero in this country. The latter is more globally relevant than the former.
Totally agree. But looking at specifics, and dissecting why they work or do not, helps suss out patterns.
For example, Tesla’s benefits are amplified—perhaps even characterised—by their ecosystem effect. That doesn’t happen when you have a quasi-monopoly like Facebook. On the other hand, their downsides are largely a function of lying. That’s common across Silicon Valley, and may similarly have a systematic treatment. (Or, at least, if you’re replicating the model, consider removing that in your iteration.)
Same with Silicon Valley. There are certain negative aspects to it but overall we are discussing this on the amazing supercomputer it created, with software it wrote, on platforms it maintains [1]. I seriously doubt the majority of people would want to go back to a world without SV's innovations.
[1] of course it wasn't SV alone, there were many contributions from all around the world, it's just that SV spearheaded the changes and lead us on this path.
Do you mean the military dictatorship? I’m not sure if they are reliable sources. But yes, Myanmar blames lots of their ethnic violence problems on Facebook, it couldn’t be bad governance at all right?
It's the opposite, Tesla is a huge net negative, whereas Facebook is a huge net positive.
People are so weird these days, they come to hate the stuff that they use everyday and idolise stuff that would never use nor need to use
I believe it has to do with the fact that most people really aren't happy with themselves or their lives
Tesla’s did kick off the trend of big screens in cars. I prefer buttons to touch screen interactions while driving, but many people want an iPad and Tesla made that happen.
EVs are unique in their battery requirements. They demand high-discharge, high-endurance, very fast charge batteries, and Tesla did some research on that front. What's important that they were not the sole researchers in that area.
On the other hand, they lack the know-how required to make cars efficiently and assemble them with state of the art methods (minimal/standardized fasteners, fatigue management, fast manufacturing with consistent quality and finishing, etc.).
A great visual is this video of someone snapping together much of a Model Y like legos, in ten minutes by himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawGMl8sHzc
Another fun one is Munro's comparison of the thermal management systems for a Model Y and Ford Mach-E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1kHsd3Ocxc
The battery chemistry and production methods didn’t change fundamentally from Goodenough’s formulation. What did was scale manufacturing. China took the lead, with A123’s tech. But Tesla showed there was demand for EVs in the rich world, and that production could be tamed such that money could be made from it. (EV batteries share little to no production footprint with cells for consumer electronics. They drain differently.)
Pretty much every EV sold in America today was financed by investors looking for the next Tesla, or announced by manufacturers in response to Tesla.
That, too, is up for discussion, but not for now. I’ll leave it by saying that, without Tesla willing to sell cars at a loss for a long time, it might be a bit less further on that path, but I think California and/or the EU would have forced it by now to get on that path, by setting goals for cars sold within their jurisdictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect)
There also can be discussion about whether Tesla’s path is the right pat, but that definitely is for another time.
For hybrids, maybe. California is a major oil producer [1]. That lobby counterbalanced the environmental wing for decades. If there wasn’t a mass-market EV, Sacramento wouldn’t have had many options.
> that definitely is for another time
Lol, is this a thing now? We’re obviously discussing it at this time.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbbl_m.htm
If not for Tesla, America (& the Western world in general) might not be on a path towards private inefficient electrified road transport, leaving much more room for investment in & upselling of vastly more sustainable non-road transport, as has been done in China.
Musk in particular has form here - consistently blocking & derailing all potential high-speed rail projects for the west coast in favour of white elephants (the material result being a maintained reliance on roads, and - by extension - his big cobalt-mine-dependent business).
Musk ran California’s high-speed rail through the Central Valley?
I like public transport. But America isn’t built for it. Switching to trains would mean upending and dissolving tens of millions’ communities. There was no other path without EVs and trains galore; it was—and is—between EVs and ICE cars.
Seems a very honest interpretation of events to purport that Musk has had no influence over transport in California.
> America isn’t built for it.
That rhetoric is used the world over as an excuse to bolster against progressive innovation of all kinds. It's been debunked countless times. "Dissolving" communities to make way for rail is of course also nonsense.
You mean, America was un-built from it. We had it, but the car and oil industry lobbied it away. We can rebuild it. Don't believe the hype.
Yes. It was traumatic and widely regarded as a mistake. Given the precedent, and our massively increased per-capita resources today versus in the post-War era, you'd be fighting an army of suburban Jane Jacobs to remake America à la China or Europe.
[1] https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-veh...
[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/25/us-electric-car-sales-i...
[3] https://electrek.co/2023/10/12/ev-sales-7-9-us-market-volvo-...
(Side note: the standard-range Teslas use lithium iron-phosphate batteries which don't contain cobalt.)
And that is good news because? So that 100 year from now the avg temperature would be 0.005C less because we'd have substitued the black pollutant produced by Arabs with Star and Stipes Lithium (or lithium which comes from countries that are in the sphere of influence of the US)
This effort is a spit in the face of people who are alive and have big problems right now, that's the reason why they are engaging in rolling coal as a form of protest against this nonsense.
In 2022 every fourth car sold (including petrol/diesel) was a Tesla.
https://elbil.no/om-elbil/elbilstatistikk/
https://www.elbil24.no/nyheter/hver-fjerde-nybil-var-en-tesl...
While Tesla probably played a role in EV adoption, I think you are overstating it by a lot. If the main factor wasn't economic we would see these same stats in every other country where a Tesla can be bought.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
And every country has been massively subsidizing ICEs since their creation, both explicitly and implicitly (by failing to price in the enormous externalities, engaging in nasty geopolitics up to and including war for oil, tolerance for enormous human atrocities and authoritarian regimes, etc).
Economics certainly matters, but there still have to be vehicles people want to actually buy and can perform as they wish. For me BEVs haven't hit that yet even though I could afford one. Like, there's been a surprisingly slow rollout when it comes to trucks, I think the Cybertruck is the first one I'd consider a real useful (in theory) truck with a minimum of a 6.5' bed. Except build quality is apparently pants, there is all the Tesla spying, and they downgraded the max range option from 500 (paper, which they also apparently lied about) miles (which even on paper would be like 300-350 miles in winter which would be a good useful range), and other problems. Even if the US Government offered me 50% subsidies or something ludicrous for a BEV truck it wouldn't matter if there's literally nothing I want to buy. I think building cars that were actively good vs what came before mattered, as does the charging network. Even if Tesla has run into awful scaling problems and founder-syndrome as happens so often that doesn't IMO negate that.
I think my comment above was indeed a bit snarky and is rightfully getting downvoted.
https://bilmagasinet.no/bilaret-2013-ble-historisk-godt/
The Leafs were small and had a very short range. They were no replacement for petrol or diesel cars for families. Unlike Tesla S and X.
If you happened to be unaware all of these Tesla-skeptics ( atleast this latest round of skeptics ) are being buoyed by this Reuters report about major problems Tesla owners have faced off late. One describing a new owner's experience with his spanking new Tesla : "The vehicle’s front-right suspension had collapsed, and parts of the car loudly scraped the road as it came to a stop."
Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/Well, gee, no wonder that people were buying them left and right when the tax discount was about 16-20k NOK per car on average!
And that is just buying the car - Norway subsidizes electric mobility in many other ways so even today registering a new electric is cheaper than a gasoline car, despite the gas powered vehicles normally costing about 50% less.
So, please, when waving this sort of argument about, don't "forget" to put it in context.
Norway is a special case because of government policies, not because Tesla did anything particularly great there. They were just the only ones on the market at the time so people essentially had to buy a Tesla if they wanted to benefit from the generous subsidies because there simply wasn't anything else available. Today the situation is different, though.
Model Y is the most sold car model in the world in 2023.
Not quite, the Toyota Corolla and RAV-4 both outsold it
If the government discounts cars by 25% - that's one thing. But let's not forget too that the greater part of the cost of running a car (the fuel) is mainly made up by tax on the fuel - it itself is an artificial price.
Nothing about transport is reflective of the underlying reality. Its simply a governmental chess board, and could be shifted at any time by new legislation, eg if a tax is introduced to add 50% tax on the electricity used for cars.
Regardless of the worthiness of this or that cause - its most interesting that none of this the free market in action. Its also licensing, government grants, taxes... in all honesty what is the difference between this and communism - where the government overtly controls the actions of the masses?
I agree. It should start with stopping all fossil fuel subsidies, 7 trillions/year and growing. And ethanol subsides, subsidizing ethanol production on 40m acres, just in US.
And have fossil fuel companies pay for their own military to protect their 6 million assets and 16 million transportation flows[2]. It should be determined by the companies themselves (free market) if these are worth protection, instead of having Govts protect these worldwide. Solar, on the other hand, will not require there protections, it does not depend on the exploration, extraction, shipping, processing, burning, waste output of any fuel. Solar is distributed, on every roof and field, nearly impossible for anyone to invade and destroy.
[1] Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022
[2] https://github.com/Lkruitwagen/global-fossil-fuel-supply-cha...
That may be true in Europe, but not here in the US. In the US, the federal gasoline tax is currently about $.18 per gallon, and state taxes range from about $.09 to $.58 per gallon[1] (with the median around $0.27). The average price of gasoline in the US has been around $3.00 per gallon[2] ($0.79 per liter), so the total tax would range from about 9% to 25% of the cost, depending on the state.
The price of gas in most European countries is much higher, with Norway paying over twice the US average (US $7.87 / US gallon).[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
[2] https://www.finder.com/gas-prices
[3] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/Europe/
OPs point had nothing to do with wether the government subsidised EVs or not.
The original argument was not that they were "leader" but that somehow people were buying Teslas for their quality or being better than everything else.
Second, they are still the leader. The quality arguments are clearly nitpicky since people seem to be buying them in droves anyway.
When Tesla introduced the Model S there were no other electric sedans on the market.
Tesla introduced the Model X in 2015, it’s now 2023 and you still have to wait almost 2 years more if you want Volvo’s competitor to the Model X. Even with all the amazing subsidies Volvo is still a decade late to the party!
I'll try to find the article.
It looks more like technology is <<redistributing>> wealth, which is SUPER scary since technology inherently allows concentration.
Facebook killed 1 million newspapers, yay, now 1 American corporation can siphon all those profits to... no one even knows where, since it's probably parked in some tax haven. It created 10k jobs paid 500k each by killing 10 million jobs each paid 60k. I'm not super convinced the end result is better.
Edit:
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/produ...
> The productivity paradox (also the Solow computer paradox) is the peculiar observation made in business process analysis that, as more investment is made in information technology, worker productivity may go down instead of up. This observation has been firmly supported with empirical evidence from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
He said from the warm comfort of his home, with a full belly, writing on a supercomputer created in SV, with software written in SV, on a platform build by SV on a global network created, of course, by the SV.
Would you give up technology then? Nobody stops you but I seriously doubt the productivity of hand-plowing fields is in any way higher than that of modern farm equipment.
The delta between floor and ceiling does not matter. Lift everyone up, this is not 0 sum.
Yes it does. Relative power is a thing, even in a democracy.
The important stuff absolutely is zero sum. Housing , p**y and bragging rights
Also, what’s the argument for Facebook killing newspapers? Craigslist was siphoning off a main source of newspaper revenue for papers long before Facebook arrived. Would you also argue against the end result of moving on from local classifieds sections?
All that aside, Tesla's approach is to have a few overall form factors and to innovate in software. The hardware is fine and matters a lot less.
The very post that started this discussion says otherwise. Software doesn't get you from A to B on its own.
I thought that was an interesting observation, and I've been reminded of it ever since. Maybe that person was right.
Tesla targets a very narrow range of the car market. It doesn't make much sense for them to have two similar-sized models, because the Venn diagram of "people who want an EV" and "people who want a $SIZE $BODY_STYLE" is already pretty narrow.
Model X price segment competitors: Audi Q8/SQ8 e-tron, BMW iX, Mercedes EQS SUV, Lotus Eletre
There are dozens of EVs with better powertrains and interiors for less money than the S/X. I have merely listed cars with similar MSRPs.
1) No buttons but shit quality touch "areas in places you have to guess" on steering wheel, is straight up dangerous, and incredibly annoying because you can't "get a feel" for anything you have to do, ie. turn lights, wipers etc.
2) No other knobs for sound, climate etc. instead touch screen. Same thing stupid, slow and dangerous.
3) No speedometer, "just look constantly to the right and down" ok now it's getting in to joke territory.
4) Shit interior.
A Renault Zoe cheap mini car is easier in day to day use because of this.
The Tesla UI is the best car UI I've ever used. By far. I would never want to go back.
1. There's zero guessing. The steering wheel touch zones are very nicely marked by bumps. I have never put my finger in the wrong spot. 2. You can configure the steering wheel buttons to do sound/climate/etc. But you're mostly meant to use voice and put everything on auto. 3. Never in my life have I just stared at the speedometer. Why are you staring at it so much? Is something wrong?
Impressive technology, and admirable strides towards their mission, impressive engineers ... but with many failing: FSD, repairability, boring drive-feedback, insurance pricing, focus on speed over alsmost everything, manufacturing quality both inside and outside, and the design language of a taxi-cab to top it all off ... only the S can be considered a decent looking vehicle.
But, above all, once you lose goodwill (via the CEO behaving like a thirsty attention-grabbing idiot) you lose nearly everything. This is what I don't think is factored into their ridiculous company valuation.
Tesla have been both one of the most impressive companies of the last 20 years, and one of the biggest dissapointments (to me).
All that said, I think the Model 3 feels remarkably sporty for how heavy it is. You can feel that weight in corners for sure, but I'd hardly call the ride "numb". I can't accelerate entirely through a typical corner like I can with the STI, but once the weight settles, and you're coming out of a corner, you can make up whatever was lost when scrubbing speed with instant torque. I think because of that, it feels far more like my STI than most all other cars I've driven.
I’m all for innovation, but it just seems like Elon is being a contrarian since none of this improves driving at all. Deep down, it seems like Elon is checking how much he can mess with his loyal base by moving things around and making the driving UX worse. Probably strokes his ego.
I also used to produce music and buttons were always better, more tactile, then comes latency which is another modern problem - imagine a touch piano with 40ms delay, not good.
Someone also mentioned militaries changed back from touch to knobs because you'd never get the same speed and "feel".
I'm convinced the human mammal is simply adapted to use our hands with tools and materials that give good solid, instant feedback with lots of tactility, texture, depth and even sound and we'll hopefully realise this in the UX world.
Regarding the "who even looks at a speedometer" is just bizarre to me as a city/provincial driver also in Scandinavia. You need to look there continuously as speed limits more or less constantly change when driving here; from 30, to 50, then 40, then 80, then 30 and going more than 30% over you can get a huge fine and 1/3 strike to get your license revoked, ie. you actually have to glance quite a bit which i guess is why car manufacturers have put speedometers there for 100 years, isn't this a normal part of driving a car?
Where the f*ck is a HUD in a tesla? That's exactly the kind of car which should be getting cool space-age tech like that.
Elon already went on twitter and said no HUD ever and disparaged people asking for it.
Why did another comment saying basically the same thing get mass downvoted and killed? HUDs are some of the coolest features in cars and tesla refusing to implement it is a deal breaker for a LOT of people in the know.
At worst, it obscures part of your vision. It also causes more eye strain to use, because there's movement in the background compared to a dashboard.
Fighter pilots have been using HUDs for 70 years and in the past 20 years they have become common in airliners as they hugely improve safety in low-visibility operations.
It’s the best thing about my new car and I can’t imagine buying something, other than a track beater, without it in the future.
Without checking speedometer often, how do you know if you're not going above the speed limit?
Anyways, generally plenty of feedback to observe without needing to glue your eyes to a speedometer. Is this not a common thing?
For me, it's the relative silence of going from 0-60 MPH in under 4 seconds that does it. I have an ICE car that can almost do that, but it does so very loudly requires me to shift gears manually as it happens. It's a full body and mind experience, one full of very obvious feedback.
To a degree, but not to the finesse of 10% + 2mph which is the threshold of prosecution in the UK, for example.
Can you tell 20 from 24mph, or 30 from 35mph, without looking?
As with most of the things that people worry about with these, it’s actually not a problem.
I'll reluctantly agree with this notion, but will say that being the best car UI is hardly difficult to achieve.
> There's zero guessing.
What? Do you use the UI every day? I do, and I'm constantly guessing where the latest UI update moved things to.
I suspect my Model 3 doesn't have "touch zones" on the steering wheel either, since if it I did, I'd certainly be touching them unintentionally. Or maybe my Model 3 does have them, and I just haven't found the UI control/setting to know if I do or not.
The configurable steering wheel button is a huge win in terms of usability, and it's also relatively new to the Model 3.
> you're mostly meant to use voice and put everything in auto.
Some of us don't have voices. Being able to speak out loud should not be a requirement for driving a vehicle.
Regarding everything being in auto: when everything is in auto, sometimes the car wants to automatically slam on the brakes or swerve into oncoming traffic or stopped police cars. You may be comfortable with that risk. I am not.
I have also never stared at my speedometer, but that's usually because on most cars it's easy to just glance down and see a speedometer.
On the Model 3, you have to: remember where the speedometer is now (since UI updates have moved it - it's had 4 different locations since I've owned my Tesla). Once you do find it, you have to ignore all the other UI baubles crowding around it. There are dancing grey 3D models of nearby vehicles, notifications, yellow icons, if your blinker is on, and you found the setting to enable it, sometimes a side camera overlay alternating between something you can see and full yellow/white from brightness of the blinker over exposing the shot, green icons, models of nearby vehicles that are swapping out between a truck shape, a sideways car shape, cones, then back into the sedan model (even though the vehicle it's rendering is actually a tiny old pick up trick).
It UI may be the "best car UI" you've ever used, but that doesn't mean touch-screen-only controls in a vehicle are even remotely a good idea.
No. Changes in technology.
Sometimes changes are for the worse.
Just because something changed does not mean it is better.
It is just that his highness, greatest pretengineer of recent times, SEC-convicted fraudster, CCP-affiliated (some say owned) dude whilestill holding US security clearances, documented drugster and potentially affiliated too with Mexican cartels, has a strong NIH syndrome, and thinks he's smarter than decades of engineers contributing their discoveries into our human knowledge pool. Constantly overruling the more sensible people still working for him by authoritarian decrees.
Besides, the SEC scandal is pretty small-beer in terms of auto industry scandals - see the VW emissions scandal, the safety scandal of Toyota which is only just kicking off, General Motors ignition switch scandal, going all the way back to the classic defective gas tank scandal from Ford...
Edit: I even missed a zero, it has a 800billion valuation
But it’s about number of dollars made, not cars.
And on that metric Tesla is on par with GM and ahead of Ford. I don’t know about Toyota.
(Did you see the latest video? It's crazy how well the hands and fingers work -- and how plodding its walk still is. Even Joe Biden walks faster!)
I was involved in a study a few years back that looked (in part) at how engineering undergraduates defined entrepreneurship and startup. It fortunately the results from that part ended up on the cutting room floor to focus out main paper on something else…
Generally, to undergraduate engineers, entrepreneurship and startups are defined by the following things:
Being in Silicon Valley/San Francisco
Doing something related to technology
Being financially successful (yes…noting another finding was that they often subconsciously conflated revenue and profit, but only when told the financial data was from a “startup”)
Being controlled by their founder
In the car world that’s just getting started.
edit: (not really a great example, just wanted to play off of 'the world's oldest profession')
Better example would be calling Macy's a startup because Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the 1600s.
It's not an acceptable excuse to shrug your shoulders and say that they're new at this. The concept of delivering a vehicle isn't new and Telsa has a TON of money.
Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.
Things like panel gaps are not necessarily easy fixes - i.e. what if you know the solution to a 1mm improvement, but can't easily fix it without taking the production line down for x weeks because you need to change the robot arm and conveyor system?
The zero defect thing is fixing issues early rather than fixing them at the end - not shutting down the whole line if you identify that a tolerance can be improved and waiting for the fix.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/toyotas-daihatsu-to-halt-veh...
1000% behind the electric push, but dang y'all, it is car company
Parent post is talking about general fit and finish (i.e. tolerances being wide), try being a production line operative and pulling the andon because you think panel gaps could be decreased.
You are supposed to be pulling it if you notice the wiring loom is broken or something like that, not just fit and finish.
Besides, people are talking in this thread like lean / six sigma are new concepts that won't be already be fully embedded in the existing Tesla plants - this stuff is basic manufacturing which will already be fully embedded, but is just misunderstood by most people.
They chose to invest in certain things (sales, manufacturing ramp up, pickup and semi development, charger network, driverless development etc.) and not in others (panel gaps, fit and finish, etc.)
Easy to decide you disagree but it is working for them.
Corporations wins are customers losses.
In Tesla case even more considering they are literally re-inventing the wheel for political purposes so the whole effort is even more ridiculous.
Consumers pay money in order not to think. The thinking has to be done by the organization who takes their money.
In Tesla's case particularly given that there is some Stockholm sydrome, Heaven's Gate type thing going on between Tesla and their customers.
I'm no "car engineer", but I doubt most of Tesla's production issues are "simple".
>Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.
Software is the last comparison I would have made. First of all Tesla is a software company. Secondly, the software industry is notorious for terrible products gaining massive market share. cough Google Docs/Sheets/Slides.
It’s easy to poach engineers. It’s impossible to poach a business culture.
There's a HN meme of sorts that goes like "I can build that same website functionality in a weekend, why does company XYZ employ 5000 people to do it?!"
It's a recurring theme because there's some truth to it. Someone can indeed build the core functionality of that website in a weekend, if they ignore 99% of the difficult work of doing it in production and supporting customers and all the rest of the mundane but important parts.
Building a car isn't that hard really. Lots of people do one-off car build in their garage with basic tools and a shoestring budget. And they can build a fun car which works! Sure, it's not maintainable nor supportable but they built it and it works great.
So while Tesla is well past the guy in a garage stage, they are still at the stage of "building cars is really easy" (if you ignore all the maintainability and supportability and long tail of parts availability and everything else that established manufacturers know how to do).
Tesla is a publicly traded company, subject to all the rules and regulations of the territories it operates in.
Also, valuation is effectively meaningless. That valuation has nearly zero correlation to Tesla's actual value.
You mean 800 billion valuation?
It is a public company, so by definition it is not a startup.
It's a bummer because with Elon's antics I don't see myself owning another Tesla, but my experience so far has been great.
It does not take a century to match up quality engineering with QA processes than take those inputs and re-make the automation line.
Not very conducive to driving product innovation.
Assembly absolutely is manufacturing.
They still lag somewhat in other areas (drivetrain efficiency, software, ADAS etc.), but to say that a new company can't build cars well is simply just not true.
You must be a 100yr old conglomerate, those companies never do shady things or have failures in quality control.
Tesla is also no longer innovating, they are far behind in almost every way. They lost their lead in battery tech, marketing and assistance features.
They are still innovating. For all of its other drama the Cybertruck has some amazing innovations. It's now a 48V system, uses an ethernet bus, uses un-treated stainless steel, etc.
Again, I'm not remotely claiming the Cybertruck is a great vehicle or that it won't have any problems, but they definitely are still innovating on vehicles.
Marketing? Tesla never really had a marketing department and now doesn't even have a PR department, last I heard.
Its steel body panels alone qualify as both disruptive market and technical innovation. There's exactly nothing else like it.
Did you see Munro's walking tour of the steel fab? The welding of the interiors to their respective body panels is awesome. Just one of dozens of process and technical innovation. Terrific stuff.
Acknowledging caveats about Musk, leadership, working conditions, FSD, yadda yadda aside:
Other manufacturers certainly have noted Cybertruck's reduced part count (BOM) and labor hours. They've gotta be concerned.
Like Apple with the iPhone, Tesla will continue to be more profitable than its competitors. Cheaper cost of capital, pour those profits back into R&D, fly wheel effect, etc.
If you’re one of the 3/20 Tesla 3 owners that have serious faults Teslas innovation isn’t of much value to you.
[0[ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-mu...
It could be that the Shanghai factory is more well run, or it could get experience from the other factories, the model 3 is just 7 years old and before that Tesla was doing more small scale production.
But historically Chinese produced cars are worse than those made in other countries. Toyota, for example, has huge quality problems in China that it didn’t have in US or Japanese produced cars. It would be cool if it is the opposite for Tesla.
I guess scale allows you to compensate for years of experience.
Would be interesting to see how they will test your theory in the next few years. My hypothesis is a few chinese brands will be scoring in the top 10% of reliability in the next 5 years.
That may be, but Tesla didn't have to rediscover everything from scratch, just like SpaceX didn't have to reinvent rocketry from scratch but rather stood on the shoulders of decades' worth of giants.
Nothing like having your dashboard go black at 70 mph to instill confidence in your car.
Is yours a MCU1 model with problematic eMMC that has worn out?
Major complaint here: when it does happen, it takes minutes to reset, and you can't see your speed and get no audible cues for what is going on with the car. It is an extremely dangerous failure state.
That sounds like some software guy somewhere didn't realize that those seats in the car aren't only for carrying air but that actual people or, gosh, occasional other drivers ride in them too.
Sadly this is rather symptomatic for many things coming out of Silicon Valley (not only Tesla).
I was sure you were going to complain about the windshield wipers "automatic" mode
Tesla's supercharger map shows which stations are open to non-Teslas so far: https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=66.26595543136888%2C...
Their software is buggy and has a lot of friction points compared to mobile phones which is a high bar to cross.
The catch is that a lot of the other car manufacturers supports CarPlay and Android Auto which allow you to have a better experience.
The car had a lot of plastic and whenever I drove over bumpy roads, there were cracking friction sounds everywhere. Additionally, the acceleration was extremely sensitive, making it difficult to maneuver in tight streets.
Tesla is not a luxury car company. You pay a premium for the electric part, and put up with everything else.
They took a risk that nobody else was willing to make and proved a market. We're in a better place, ecologically speaking because of them. Their cars are also cheaply made. Now that manufacturers that know what they're doing are competing, Tesla is in trouble.
Aside from possibly BYD, other manufacturers have no particular cost advantage over Tesla in BEVs. Ford and GM are still losing money on each one they sell, and have cut production for next year.
The 2013 BMW 1 Series had a starting price of $35k. A Tesla model 3 starts at $40k in today’s dollars. Seems pretty even.
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024-tesla-model-3-highla...
What a perilously flawed failure mode. Yet, throughout these months, during which the car swerved erratically at least 20 times, no alerts were triggered, nor were errors or crash dumps logged that could be detected by their technicians or the main office in California. It required GoPro footage from inside my car to highlight the issue.
Their service process is Kafkaesque. Phone support is ineffective, and you're relegated to using a text box in the mobile app that only accepts small image attachments. Videos cannot be uploaded directly; they provide an email address, but emails can;'t contain links or they will be blocked and emails with large attachments won't work. Each interaction feels like starting from scratch, as they don't seem to review the history or notes of your issue.
As for the humidity or fog in your headlights, they claim it's within specifications and will dissipate once the car warms up. There's so much more, phantom breaking at highway speeds, exaggerated range estimates, slow headlight dimming, headlights that need constant re-calibration, terrible rain sensors and wiper modes, etc. etc.
Even when it runs nominally, it prompts you every 20 seconds or so to apply turning force to the wheel (counterintuitively, as you want to go straight in the lane). If you are momentarily distracted (like having a relaxed conversation) and miss the warning, boom, DEFCON 5. Do that a few times and now the car will actively prevent you using autopilot, like an overbearing mother.
The feature that is supposed to make driving more enjoyable, instead ratcheting up anxiety towards almost giving everyone a heart attack. I drive other cars all the time and they do this fine. So weird.
*autopilot = I am just talking about cruise control + lane keeping, i.e. press down on the stalk. Not sure about the naming.
This is a huge issue with Tesla's system, they were too cheap to actually detect hands on the wheel and instead train you to exert undue force on the wheel which can lead to steering incorrectly. The timing for the system is haphazard at best and often dings you for not having hands on the wheel when you do, but you were too busy driving to pay attention to the prompts.
Then post the video and publicly call them out?
> It wasn't until I contacted their PR department and threatened to involve the press that they took the matter seriously.
This is where ya lose me... Tesla doesn't have a 'PR department'
He probably means he contacted the email address listed under the heading "Press" on their contact page. At any other company the department that handles that address would be called the PR department.
You say this as if it is something somebody should be reasonably expected to do, rather than this is something no one should reasonably have to deal with.
Regarding autopilot, I agree that it's bad. I don't know how it compares to other cars - I've never driven another car with lane-keeping - only a Toyota and a Volkwagon with adaptive cruise control, and my Tesla seems to be as good as they were.
In truth I think the whole "self-driving car" idea is a horrible mess. If I were a regulator the only self driving I would approve is Level 5 - full self driving, and maybe level 4 which is really level 5 just geofenced. Either you're driving the car or the car is driving itself, you can't have it both ways.
Adaptive cruise control is still you driving - because if you lose focus or attention for more than a second or two you'll slip off lane - while lane keeping is horrifying to me because you could lose attention for half and hour and still be fine - right until you're not (and neither is the person you hit).
All this to say that yes, Tesla's autopilot is crap, but I don't use it and wouldn't use a competitor's version, so I don't measure it by that yardstick.
Unless the car becomes a pile of junk under me I don't see all the hate. As with any popular product, you'll find people with several sigmas of bad experience.
Problems that I think are unique to the Tesla:
Even after 4+ years of driving, I still hate the door handles. They require so much more dexterity than "normal" car door handles. You gotta aim your thumb at a quarter sized spot, then push in so that your fingers have a chance to catch the lever before you pull your thumb away. Normal car doors are stupid enough that they could be opened by a lobster. When the Model 3 handles freeze (which happens where I live), the user manual instructs you to hit the handles with your fist. Like a caveman. How about real door handles?
The entire top sheet of glass spontaneously shattered while just sitting in my garage. I was sweeping the other side of my garage one afternoon when there was what sounded like a gunshot. I looked over and saw that the top class window had just fully cracked diagonally across the entire pane. There were no rock chips on its front edge (a common precursor to full shatter), no kids standing on it (a less common precursor). My best guess is that the body of the car warmed up in the garage after coming in from the cold, but the glass itself wasn't yet warm enough and that was enough to cause thermal expansion that was incompatible with it wanting to remain whole. Cost $1500 to replace, and Tesla refused to cover it under warranty, claiming it was not a manufacturing defect. No appeal, no second opinion. Also, it was during covid, and it took 7 weeks for the glass to arrive. So for 7 weeks, I had a very big, open, sunroof.
Then there's the UI. This is my single biggest gripe. Parts of it are objectively terrible.
The part of the UI that tells you how fast your car is going is, compared to the rest of the UI, microscopic, and rendered in a grey on white background. It's not in your line of sight, which requires you to turn to look at it. I figured out a hack though - let someone else, like my wife, tell me when I'm speeding. That only works when she's in the car though. When she's not in the car and tells me I'm speeding, I tend to ignore her.
When you're stopped at a stop, there are dancing grey car and truck models all over the place. There was a tiny old Toyota pickup truck next to me the other day, and the UI wanted to simultaneously render it as a traffic cone, a big box truck, a motorcycle, and then a sedan. It never could make up its mind, and decided to just place it sideways growing halfway out of the model of a box truck that was meant to represent the Toyota Corolla that was in front of me. What's the point of devoting more than a third of the UI to this endeavor? To show me how wrong the computer always is about what's around me?
Here's a fun one that made it to my list super early into my ownership experience: sometimes the UI will reboot while you're driving 75MPH in the middle of rush hour traffic. That makes for some serious puckering, even if it's happened 10 times before. No worries though, after driving blind for about 2 minutes it comes back online.
One time, it came back online to the "romance" app, showing a lovely fireplace and adjust the fans to gently blow warm air on me to set the mood. I was not in the mood. I was using the route navigation to get me someplace. Instead of knowing what exit to take, I was enjoying a warm fire. On an August afternoon in Los Angeles rush hour traffic.
Then there's the Autopilot experience. Not Full Self Driving, but just Autopilot. When you're using it to stay within lanes, it'll aggressively try to center itself in the lane, which is good for staying in the lane, but if you pass an onramp, and the right lane line vanishes for that onramp to merge into the lane you're in, the car will violently align itself between the left lane line, and the onramp's right lane lane. It'll happily do that whether you're going 20 MPH or 100 MPH. I don't use Autopilot any more.
When I go to work in the morning, while backing out the overlays that show your rear and side cameras will appear, but imagery from the cameras will often take over a minute to appear. But not always, and it's that part that's the most unsettling. Why be slow sometimes and not others?
Let's talk about the front trunk latch. Is there an actual trick to close it the first time, gently? I still don't know how to best close it. I don't think I'm alone either. Yesterday while at a Super Charger I saw two different people trying to close their frunk at least 3 to 4 times each. One of them even got into an argument with their passenger for how best to do it. I rarely use my frunk anymore because I hate trying to close it.
What's crazy to me is: despite all of what I just said, damn I love driving it.
It's why I think Tesla is stupid for not pursing a bare bones, "dumb" version of the Model 3. Give it physical buttons, no driving assist fluff, real door handles, minimal glass. I'd trade in my current Model 3 for that, no question.
I... haven't really heard of anyone else having the roof spontaneously shatter. I imagine my opinion would turn as well. If I hear of more cases I would definitely change my mind and sell.
The UI is terrible, but living where I do there's traffic almost all the time, and I generally go the speed of the car ahead of me, so I'm not really concerned with speeding. I don't mind turning to see the speedometer, my previous car, a Yaris, had the speed display at about the same angle from me.
I haven't experienced lag with the cameras.
Closing the frunk was always easy for me I just lean on the top gently for a second and it latches no problem. I don't use it much though.
I hate autopilot, see my comment above.
+1 for loving to drive it. You have the power you need and the ride is smooth. I'm told some of the other electrics are also as smooth, but the Supercharger network and my experience with non-Tesla public chargers makes the choice of an electric very easy.
The Supercharger network is a very nice part of the Tesla experience. When I first got my Model 3, I assumed that non-Tesla charging networks were at least functional, but learned very quickly how much of a mess other networks are.
Any time I've attempted to charge somewhere other than a Supercharger there were issues. Either the charger simply didn't work, or the rate of charge was slower than if I'd connected to a 110v outlet.
Another benefit I often forget about is how I can park my car in my garage or driveway with 50 miles of range at the end of the day and wake up to 300. Having the "gas pump" at home is fantastic and something I often take for granted. It's also hard to convey the benefits to those who don't charge at home. It seems like a trivial thing, and it's even something I feel weird about being so enthusiastic about. I try to tell people it's like having someone fill your gas tank every morning. For about $10.
I've considered replacing my wife's car with an EV that isn't a Tesla, but the thought of dealing with the craptastic non-Tesla charging networks stops me every time. I'm hoping that sentiment will improve as more manufacturers join the network and the overall charging experience improves, rather than decline due to the influx of new vehicles using the network.
Compared to what? I am a BMW owner who would never recommend this brand to anybody because of its horrible build and software problems.
Thank God for CarPlay!
And these are just a few of the software problems BMW has. On the hardware side I experienced electrical problems, badly installed parts, crappy rubber and complete loss of coolant. New car, lightly driven, btw.
There seems to be a bunch of Musk hatred that people just transfer to Tesla hatred.
I also have a Volvo XC60 with lane keeping, I find it's much more reliable than Autopilot and doesn't dangerous "phantom break" at highway speeds for no reason. See my other comment for some more, but not an exhaustive list, of the issues I have with my Model 3.
I've been tracking, drifting and driving quite hard (bloody potholes!). I don't think I'll ever sell this car.
All in all, not a terrible experience.
My last Nissan shut off (including the power steering) in the middle of the road while I was driving; I don't recall the exact problem but it was related to the motor. My BMW blew a headgasket. My Subaru was recalled for a faulty transmission. None of those flaws are even possible with an all electric drivetrain.
I’m vacillating over buying another Tesla in the future. If I could guarantee a similar experience to my last car I definitely would, but I’m also wary of getting stuck when something goes wrong and the only recourse is Tesla’s anecdotally expensive/unreliable/un-customer-friendly “service”.
Normally this means finding faults that occur since the last maintenance interval. If a car has a long or no maintenance interval (like Tesla) then more faults are expected.
Also note that failure can mean windshield wiper needing replacement or headlight re alignment rather than a premature part failure.
As you say, I suspect the lack of scheduled maintenance significantly impacts the ratings here
So a low reliability in exchange for a very low purchase price is to be expected.
For the price of a Tesla, you could buy a large number of Dacia Logan, to use another one whenever one breaks down.
So Tesla should better improve their quality, to no longer be comparable to the cheapest existing cars.
NVH are most assuredly THE most significant faults to sales operations analysts and finance auditors who see lack of return buyers, or literal returns of the vehicles.
Just because a manufacturer passed safety audits that KEEP ME ALIVE does not mean they automatically get to keep my 60 grand for doing so at the absolute bare minimum.
And a windshield wiper needing replacement wouldn't count as a "significant fault" that they force you to come back for before getting certified.
This likely wouldn’t be the process with a Tesla, given there are no brick-and-mortar Tesla mechanics, and it’s less likely (given the absence of servicing) you’d have an ongoing relationship with a traditional garage for the car.
Like this isn't the data point.
These are not initial build quality issues.
I got notices for worn wipers and too low wiper liquid, but never a hard fail. Unless there were other hard fails on the list, then they got added. That happened once so far, the most serious issue being the not properly working headlights (still have to track down the wiring issue). Never failed for tire inflators, never saw those being checked or asked for.
But again, Teslas Model 3's issues are mainly suspension, brakes and steering it seems. Together with constantly worn tires on one side only, I'd guess the whole suspension design, geometry and load distribution is bad by default. Most of the time this tire wear patterns are user errors, aka bad tuning attempts and tire choices, bad tire pressure...
But ye it is an indirect measurement.
This implies we need an inspection regime in America. We’ve counted on servicing to catch unsafe cars. I hadn’t thought of that as something that changed.
Virginia: https://vsp.virginia.gov/safety-and-enforcement/vehicle-safe...
Massachusetts: https://www.mavehiclecheck.com/motorists-basicinfo#Safety
Those are the only two states I've lived in. I don't get why so much of the country doesn't do these; it seems the Northeast of the US almost all require periodic safety inspections and the western US does not.
If I had a hunch, income plays a part. Flyover states are poor, that means older and more beat up cars. Older cars (out of warranty let's say) are more costly to fix. States have to balance "people need a car to make money" with "people need money to drive safe cars".
Many states require yearly inspections already.
> Fifteen states have a periodic (annual or biennial) safety inspection program, while Maryland requires a safety inspection and Alabama requires a VIN inspection on sale or transfer of vehicles which were previously registered in another state. An additional 16 states require periodic emissions inspections.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
But everything else is shitty. The construction quality, random breakages, neverending rattles are annoying. My Tesla spent more time in service than my partner's Toyota, and this includes regular oil changes.
The one unforgivable thing about the Toyota is the infotainment system. What a blight on humanity.
But otherwise, such a great car. I’ve never really liked cars until this thing. It’s so comfortable, reliable, cheap to maintain, and makes all of our trips like camping and mountain biking such a joy. The Tesla would have been such a headache in comparison, I think.
At the time I was certain it would be the other way around, but charging networks weren’t sufficient in the places we travel yet. I’m glad that’s the way it went now.
If you want the fully featured maps, guidance just pair your phone. Done. CarPlay is leagues beyond anything I have seen otherwise in an infotainment system.
https://www.soumu.go.jp/johotsusintokei/whitepaper/ja/r04/ht...
86% of the population owns a smartphone. That's higher than the USA
And GM is removing CarPlay and android auto entirely from their head units. Under the guise of “safety”.[2]
Frankly unless consumers react strongly, I don’t see the car industry righting the ship with their anti consumer crap.
I have a 2009 Toyota. Arguably the sweet spot for features. Have a backup camera integrated into the tailgate but minimal otherwise computerized stuff. The A/C controls are the traditional 3 dial setup which is ideal for me, I can adjust it without looking down at all. I had to pull over to turn off the heat when I borrowed my in-laws F-150 for a day. I did swap the head unit for a kenwood with wireless CarPlay and integrated dashcam.
Given what I had seen from new models, I’m going to be sticking with my 09 Tacoma for a while longer at least.
Even my wife’s 2018 Honda Pilot had surging issues at low RPMs that was caused by dirty transmission fluid. Nothing that would throw an error, luckily my mechanic had just seen the same issues before. Her car has had more issues than mine honestly.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-droppin...
To anyone not into cars I'll give a simple advice: unless you really do a lot of high-speed highway driving (that'd be 80mph+ / 130km/h+, european highways speed), simply buy a Toyota.
I don't think you can go very wrong buying a Toyota.
And this comes as a german cars lover.
The only reason wife traded her Toyota CH-R for a BMW is because we do lots of (european) highway driving and we felt the CH-R was too noisy on the highway (at 80 mph: at 55 mph it's totally fine).
Buy a Toyota, make sure to do the maintenance needed in official Toyota dealership so you can extended the Toyota warranty for as long as possible.
And you're good to go.
I've had a Hyundai for ten years and literally crashed it into a tree and it had no major issues for five years after that (and I gave it away and it ran for another five until it protected someone from a head on collision!). Now I'm on a ten year old Honda and haven't don't anything except regular maintenance.
It's wild to see people saying they have only had a few issues with a car a couple of years old. That's a problem!!
The air conditioner clutch went after 6 years.
That’s it. That’s the entire list of what I’ve had to do outside of regular fluid changes and basic consumables (e.g., break pads).
Subaru is generally not near the top of the list as far as reliability. And my car should be one of their less reliable models as it’s the turbocharged sports sedan. And it’s had one issue in a decade. A few major issues in four years is lunacy.
Of course it's going to be unreliable
Talk to a person IRL that doesn't sit on social media and ask how they like it.
Because Musk is an idiot it's fashionable to hate on Tesla. But there are plenty of us out there who have had an amazing experience. We had one minor issue in 4 years and it was fixed extremely promptly. The car is amazing.
Tesla also outcompetes other cars on the price/range ratio, so it's the best choice if you want a car for road trips and if you're price-sensitive.
I'm going to lease Lucid Air once they release NACS-based versions.
Anything you use and use a lot needs maintenance, especially if you rely on it, that goes for you're electric toothbrush as wel as your car. Its a utopica to think EVs somehow need less upkeep.
Sure build quality can be improved here and there, and over the last 4 years I have seen Tesla's cars become better. To me regular OTA updates, up-to-date map, apps, an actual working charging network and range are more important than having all the panels aligned withing a couple of milimeters.
Edit: also, the APK is only after the first 4 years, and does not check things like brake fluid (which you should replace now and then) and things like bearing wear unless it becomes so obvious that it is affecting driving chacteristics. The APK does not check a lot of wear and tear so you should still do regular checkups.
Edit: maintenance is not mandatory. Only when it would be in violation of the APK, and by that time you damaged more than you should have.
Although the submission title says "Faults by Car Brand", the article is actually about specific models, where Tesla's Model 3 scored the lowest.
After 3 years a car has to be inspected for the first time by law in Germany. Maybe you just didn't know something was wrong? Because usually people have their car inspected before going to the mandatory "Hauptuntersuchung" (HU) which Tesla apparently doesn't recommend, thus Teslas failing the HU en masse.
EVs objectively need less upkeep compared to engine cars because a substantial portion of maintaining a car is related to the engine and transmission.
An EV still requires maintenance like repressurizing tires; replacement of worn out tires, brakes, and wiper blades; refilling of fluids like the windshield cleaner; and so on in addition to anything EV specific, but that's all still far less compared to engine cars.
I'm really curious, why are you buying an electric car in the first place ?
Cause it's sure as hell not for the sake of saving the planet.
Middle earners drive new cars. Those cars are regularly i spected and repaired. Then sold. Obviously your milage might vary (some sales representatives drive a lot every day), but often those cars are nice.
It's not treated as income by the tax authorities? If so, I'd rather have them hand me cash instead so I can get the car I want, and won't be out of a car when I'm laid off/quit.
You usually end up paying 200-300 €/month as tax directly deduced from your salary but for that amount you have a new car with all the servicing included, even tires.
A few years ago, it was part of the standard salary package for many companies in IT so you weren't really without a car when leaving.
Some places where strict on the kind of car you can have (small cars for junior, Mercedes for management) but other places just provided you with a monthly budget so you could get whatever you want. You could also pay the difference to have a better car.
When you compare the current Model 3 feature-wise to most other brands, it's a no brainer. You need to fork out a lot more than 50k to get the assist and safety features, leather seats, seat heating, power seats, cameras, sound system, heated steering wheel, matrix headlights, backseat control screen, 4wd, performance and so on. Not having to deal with sales people and regular maintenance are bonuses.
And if you're in Europe, you charge it a home or on street parking with no hassle of going to a charging/gas station.
It's also a bit ironic that you mention 'not dealing with regular maintenance', under the article stating that Model 3 is literally the worst car on the market when it comes to significant faults.
All that being said, I'm still interested why the OP is at his 4th Tesla.
For example: speccing out a BMW X1 which is a smaller car than the Model Y, to match all the Tesla standard equipment, takes the final price to over €70k (and that’s without choosing the best engine option). While the Y already offers the same features at €45–54k, more space, huge panorama roof and ridiculously better performance. Unfortunately some companies are continuing this tradition in their EV product lines as well.
“No maintenance” refers to the lack of engine, no oil changes, less moving parts, longer brake pad life due to regen, which is one of the answers to why buy an EV.
If you are leasing, it’s normal to replace the car every 2-3 years as it gets old, especially an EV. 10-20% of all cars, and >50% of EVs on the road are on a company lease here.
If you’re constantly totalling them, sure. If you’re re-selling, it’s totally fine to show a preference for new vehicles. I don’t. But I also don’t care that much for cars or driving; to each their own.
If you don't care about your environmental impact. I'm getting tired of these talking points where you shouldn't assume any kind of responsibility for your "preferences".
My point is the environmental effect is de minimis. Possibly positive. The old car is still being driven, just by someone else. Given it’s an EV, it’s likely—on the margin—pushing an ICE vehicle off the road.
This is realized when you look at vast junkyards of unused cars in the US.
1. source?
2. what is their methodology for "maximum environmental benefit", and how do they account for the fact that when you buy a new car that costs 5 tons CO2e to produce and sell it 2 years later, that you're not on the hook for all 5 tons of emissions? That said, the cost of buying cars every 2 years probably isn't zero either. There are transaction costs and at the margins you're probably pushing the average lifetime of a car ever so slightly lower, thereby causing more emissions to be generated from manufacturing. However on the flip side, OP mentioned that he was doing this with teslas (ie. electric cars), and they're better for the environment compared with ICE cars. If his actions are displacing used ICE cars, he could be actually doing a net good by effectively subsidizing the replacement of ICE cars with electric.
>This is realized when you look at vast junkyards of unused cars in the US.
The tight used car market begs to differ.
I'm getting tired of every discussion diverging into a 'environmental impact' judgment message from anonymous.
okay but how many serious issues have you had?
What works:
- best in class software quality. Both various controls (lights, wipers, electronic parking brake etc.) and infotainment work just right.
- Navigation is quite good, especially considering it automatically adds/ suggests charging locations as needed.
- Steering assist (automatic lane and speed control) is quite handy. I never felt the need for trying out autopilot.
What doesn't work: it's just one thing for me: you cannot trust Tesla:
- Battery mileage. My model Y is supposed to give me 330miles on a full charge. For the recommended 80% charge it should be ~260 miles but in reality, I get 125 miles in winter and 200 miles in summer.
- Price drops. Cars depreciate but to have a $10-15K price drop right after I purchased really sucked. For this reason alone, I will never buy a Tesla again.
- For a 70K (model Y) car, it rattles, and they will charge 30$ to test for rattling.
- I haven't faced them but I often read about poor quality issues like cracked roof, wheels falling off (yes !).
Aren't all cars like that?
Otherwise, the (mostly) static nature of Tesla models kept the used Tesla market in decent shape
The big factor is how far above the $30k floor do you reach. A rav4 hybrid keeps a much higher percentage of its value than a rav4 prime.
There’s usually a drop some but that amount is excessive.
Steering assist + TACC is what Autopilot is.
You're probably confusing it and Enhanced autopilot (changes lanes, takes exits) or FSD (city streets BS).
That being said, Autopilot is IMO the best of their software, EAP is like a midpoint and FSD "Beta" will actively try to kill you at times (personal experience).
I do agree with your battery points though. If I tap into the Tesla API for my car right now they even have three ranges calculated out (time of sale stated, ideal, and real).
Unless your inspector has a particularly bad day, you will not fail the inspection for this. They might also simply ask you to do a five minute drive and brake hard a few times. If the brakes are still in a safe condition, this should be sufficient.
You don’t fail for surface rust, it’s not a check that’s done.
You fail for dangerous imbalance of braking force. When the car is run on the drum roller (rolling road powers the cars wheels) and the inspector presses the brakes, the braking force applied by the car is measured. You get a fail if your braking performance is likely to unsettle the car in high braking force scenarios.
Failing here is a real problem. It doesn’t warrant a dismissive surface rust claim.
Tesla does already periodically apply brakes even when regen would be enough to keep on top of surface rust. Tesla even applies brakes when excess water is detected:
“To ensure brakes remain responsive in cold and wet weather, Model 3 is equipped with brake disc wiping. When cold and wet weather is detected, this feature ...”
This has been a common feature on many brands for around 10 years at this point.
If a workshop has to do it the rust is quite bad and there are groves. Otherwise you can use the pads.
...really? One of the core elements of your car, the one that will kill you if it fails, is degraded, and that's not a big deal? What will it take?
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-E95DAAD...
Edit: interestingly, the German link seems to show something else: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/de_us/GUID-E95DAAD...
When I take it in for service I assume they don’t use the expensive stuff and chnage it at 5k miles.
Either way, that’s 2x a year for me. I’m probably below average driving at just shy of 15k miles/year. I think the average is around 15k though. That would be 2-3 oil changes if you did them at similar intervals.
Some companies (ie: BMW) mandate more frequent chnages and higher octane gas etc etc. I don’t use those cars. If I can’t service them myself I won’t buy it (Tesla included)
The best checks I get is when I ask my cousin (owner of a car shop, certified to do inspections): "take my car for a couple of days as your daily driver, if you notice anything wrong then fix it". Otherwise the official testing includes: suspension and direction (includes indirectly wheel bearing), brakes, emissions, headlight alignment, rust or corrosion signs, tire integrity and wear vs indicator, brake fluid level, antifreeze level, washer fluid level, signs of fluid leakage in the engine compartment or at wheels. That's it.
I read the instruction manuals from all my cars and motorcycles. They are a minimum, in my opinion, I check myself a lot more, regularly.
The car DOES have maintenance needs.
Lots of people in models X & S are surprised to find their seemingly ok tires are NOT OK because they wear very quickly on the non-visible inside edge.
there are brakes on the car, which have pads and fluid. There is coolant for the battery.
Honestly, there should be a maintenance screen in the UI. You should be able to replace tires, or windshield wipers or fluid and the UI should keep track of it. Even if it just says "last replaced 10/11/12 @ 23,456 miles" or "inspected 11/12/13" or something.
My direct experience with power train sensors has been a loud noise and lots of red triangle messages that something has failed (drive motor).
Another time my direct experience with inside edge wear has been... a pop and a hiss. Then the tire pressure readout gave a red triangle to say the tire had low pressure and the number was dropping to zero. (google "tesla inside edge tire wear")
My direct experience with many flat tires has been -- tesla roadside assistance will waste the rest of your day or night. I've considered buying that aftermarket spare.
And the battery fuse went once - I got a huge red message:
"BMS_u031 Battery Fuse Requires Replacement Soon - OK to drive, schedule service"?
Turns out telsa doesn't actually KNOW if the fuse needs to be replaced - you have to bring it in (google BMS_U031) It is several hundred dollars to replace.
If your car has a 12v battery, it will eventually die. The battery is fairly expensive.
actually, most maintenance stuff is hidden away. Wish I could unhide it, even if tesla only did it when out of warranty.
EVERY vehicle should have brake fluid flushed every 2 years. That Tesla recommends 4 years is straight out incompetent.
Or maybe everyone that works there is an incompetent monkey and they never test anything, ever. It's probably that, definitely. That's also why we see so many stories in the news about 5 year old Tesla's brakes failing. Given that we all know how long full self driving has been promised, I'm sure we'll get those news stories any day now.
The hydraulic portion of the braking system in a Tesla is not significantly different than any other passenger car, so yes, it’s utterly incompetent to recommend twice the maintenance interval.
Fluid Replacement Intervals
Do not change or top up the Battery coolant or brake fluid. Tesla service technicians replace fluids at the regularly scheduled service intervals:
• Brake Fluid. Every 2 years or 25,000 miles (40,000 km), whichever comes first.
• Battery coolant. Every 8 years or 100,000 miles (160,000 km), whichever comes first.
Without an ICE, the only regular maintenance you need is brake fluid. Everything else depends loosely on kilometers and style of driving and quality of materials (wipers).
That being said I vaguely recall hearing that Teslas had an annual service interval in the manual. Is that not the case?
If not, that is really, really dumb, and there is no way to justify not doing that. Especially for car that probably has more sensors, electronics and software than most cars (that also provide such info).
otoh it has a dashboard and a rim around the display to lean your hand on while you're trying to hit some ridiculously small (in a moving car) touchscreen target.
If a non-tesla person changes my tires, they haven't done anything.
I don't take my car to tesla for tires anymore. They charge you for everything, and offer no warranty. (also, my tires cannot be rotated)
> To see the miles driven since your last tire rotation or replacement, touch Controls > Service and look under Last Tire Service. After the tires on Model 3 are rotated, replaced, or swapped, update your vehicle's tire configuration by touching Reset, or by touching Wheel & Tire > Tires from the same screen. This allows your vehicle to reset the learned tire settings and improve your driving experience. This also clears and resets the tread wear alert for the vehicle until you travel 6,250 miles (10,000 km) and low tread depth is detected again.
had to look it up because I wasn't sure where it was but knew I had seen it.
Ah yes, "Big Tesla" must have gotten to...checks notes...Michelin tires[0], Ford[1], Toyota[2] and more...
Your ignorance to cars and blind hatred to Tesla is showing BTW.
[0]: https://www.michelinman.com/auto/auto-tips-and-advice/tire-m...
[1]: https://www.suttonford.com/service/service-and-parts-tips/wh...
[2]: https://www.performancetoyotapa.com/service/service-tips/how...
How much do you know about cars or mechanical engineering?
Stop being completely obtuse and actually read what you're trying to refute before making a comment out of your ass please.
In the top right corner there is "Tire Service Mileage" with an estimate of when you should service your tires. There is a reset link under that, which links into the "Wheel and Tire" service tab with more maintenance options.
There are alerts for nearly all of the things you mentioned: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-E95DAAD...
Regarding the tire wear, the car is heavy with instant torque. I've had to replace my tires quite a few times, but it's the only thing that has needed much servicing for me in the past three years. I'd expect that from a new car though, and I don't have much confidence in it's longevity.
I don't think a messed up suspension can be fixed with an OTA update
But one can sure try, right? Right?
However they required multiple thousands to swap (iirc it was 3-5k) and the car was basically non-functional without it.
That is a very hard pass for me.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39065/tesla-claims-failing-tou...
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-computer-touchscreen-r...
In a neighboring country I take my car to the service to do a quick maintenance + the official yearly thing.
This means break pads and any issues are fixed before and car would never fail an official check.
Is that not a thing for tesla?, is the driver supposed to know when to replace everything?, are sensors that good?
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/tesla-claims-its-f...
Reliability could be a bigger argument, but let's be honest at a certain point, the Tesla price point should at least make it score higher than low end cars in the linked chart, don't you think so?
Then there is the TÜV, which is a mandatory check for all cars usually every 2 years. So this seems pretty similar to your country, just with different intervals.
Quality assurance after assembly is apparently not a thing for Tesla.
Model 3 fails because of rusted brakes and failing suspension for example.
https://www.carscoops.com/2023/12/tesla-model-3-ranked-last-...
Additionaly, a lot of the more expensive brands (like VW and BMW) will do the inspection as part of a regular service and inspect the car beforehand, making failures less likely.
Thing is so, while the ADAC reliability reports exclude brands running their "own" mobility services (often enough outsourced to ADAC, but that's a different story), TÜV data is neutral. And a statistically relevant sample, TÜV is still one of the biggest providers.
It sure means that other brands, with better results, fix certain issues when the inspection is done after maintenance. Which means that Tesla has bad quality cars and bad maintenance plans.
A great way to manipulate inspection statistics.
Exactly. A car brought to the inspection by the dealership will basically never fail it. And expensive luxury cars are far more likely to be serviced by a dealer.
> A great way to manipulate inspection statistics.
I don't think this is intentional, just a nice side effect. Mostly dealerships just make the most money by servicing cars.
- bad quality
- bad maintenance because of
- no service network (which is stupid in and of itself, as you said, there is a lot of money in that)
I don't believe there is a modern gearbox where the manufacturer of said gearbox says it never needs oil changes. The vehicle manufacturer might say that, but not the gearbox manufacturer.
Case in point - my 2021 Wrangler has a ZF 8 speed auto that Jeep says never needs an oil change. ZF says it needs an oil and filter change every 100,00km.
By the way, it is still possible Jeep modified the gearbox in some way, most OEMs do.
Also: "“The low fault rates in old cars show that car owners are keenly aware of the importance of car maintenance. Regular servicing has a key role in this positive result”, stresses Wolz."
>Insert picture of plane with bullet holes
New wing mirror cost me £25!
So, labor was cheap, parts were cheap, cost of ownership was cheap :)
I had the first major issue with my Dacia since I bought it 7 years ago, and it had something to do with the LPG installation, and it was about 1000€. From a TCO standpoint of view, that car is so dirt cheap, only my little Seat Mii (CNG) - which I bought used, is cheaper.
Heh, by this logic Tesla as somehow expensive brand should be wa-a-ay below Dacia.
Here in Cyprus, there is no Tesla service and no one knows how to fix them. So people just buy them and drive until they break. Not possible with any gas car.
That's why the buyer demographic of a car is the most significant factor in the ranking. Cars used by companies, seniors, wealthy individuals or cabriolets have a good ranking. Meanwhile cars bought majorily by frugal or smart customers (Dacia, Tesla) tend to have bad rankings. This is because it's much more cost efficient to let Tüv/Dekra check you car before doing any repairs. Also what is ignored in the ranking is that some faults are much more important than others. Afaik a bad parking light can have the same influence on the ranking as a broken down transmission.
What a guy resident in California says could not be more irrelevant to vehicle inspections performed in Germany where the car is subjected to much worse weather + salt on the roads.
most people don't have young kids or have snow covered roads
> Approximately 40% of the world's population lives in regions that experience snowfall.
Could you go to the internet and check meaning of strawman argument?
Is it this one
https://www.tuvsud.com/de-de/publikationen/tuev-report/maeng...
?
That recall still doesn’t fix the underlying issue with the autopilot.
"Tesla did their part" is such a lazy cop out.
But it's all in Teslas style, they've been blaming user error for known design flaws as well and have forced unsuspecting customers to pay for that.
Or why would anyone buy a Tesla in the first place if they were not angry at money.
There is already commenter here claiming that all 4 Teslas they owned were reliable.